Presence of civil "Politics" but also politics of race, class, education

-They don't know who they are and what they're doing in this world

Complicating TV Citizenship

- TV opening dialogue on subjects of social and cultural importance

-Television reinforcing particular conceptions of citizenship

Ex: judge Judy reinforcing ideas, even though she's not a real judge

Democracy and/in/throughmedia

-Facilitated through principles of public sphere

-Not just about Politics but also politics-- what drives us to vote, not how we vote

-Media as central to citizenship: space to learn/negotiate politics of everyday life

Jurgen Habermas

-"The world fashioned by mass media is a public sphere in appearance only"

-MEDIA IS NOT PUBLIC SPHERE

Dahlgren

-Public opinion is formed from public sphere

Jones

-politics effect and are related everyday routine activities

-Everyone should worry about them

Newcomb and Hirsch

-TV unites and examines a culture

-It prevent issues relevant and is dense rich and complex rather than a construction of dominance

-As a cultural forum

Citizenship

-legal citizenship: relationship between citizen and state

-Good citizen: basic responsibilities

-Collective ideal: we all benefit if we all buy in

Cultural citizenship

-Feeling of belonging; feeling like your identity is accepted

-Different from legal citizenship; more about cultural life and cultural differences (like minorities)

Richard Dyer

-Stereotypes are not wrong, its what controls and defines them, and what interests they serve

Ordering Process

Stereotypes order the world so we can understand it

Stereotype Short cut

Stereotypes are simple and easily grasped, not complicated, carry a lot of baggage

Stereotype

1. in group stereotypes the outgroup

2. Based on power relations: dominant group convincing themselves they're better

3. limited view of the world

4. historical product

Kernel of truth

all stereotypes start with a kernel of truth that is then exaggerated and embellished

Burden or representation

-Few representatives of an individual marginalized group

-The burden of being seen to represent the whole group

Ex: gay characters played by straight people; not allowing minorities to speak for themselves

-Shohat and Stam quote

Shohat & Stam

-When minorities are casted by a non-member it's a triple insult:

you are unworthy of self-rep

No one from your community is capable of repping you

The producers of the film care little about you and there's nothing you can do about it

Voice

-Giving, finding, listening

-Point is not to demand authenticity

Radiolab story: the yellow rain makers

-The yellow rain makers

-Conflict for desire of truth and a community who just wanted to be heard

-Radiolab did not identify niece and uncle by their credentials

-Discredits the orient by not addressing people by name

Cycle of Opression

Stereotype

Prejudice

Discrimination

Oppression

Internalized oppression

Walter Lippman

- we are all so use to the new order of the world where the complete picture isnt shown

-We are too accustomed to it

Shohat and Stam

-Different stereotypes have different power in the world that oppresses to different extremes

Edward Said

- The orient is a european invention that seems to be a remarkable experience

-It is limiting though

To that culture they are distant and exotic

It takes the stand of the normal cultural position

Washes over any problems, neglecting any bad things in the lives of those people

John Berger

-Men act and woman appear. Women watch themselves being looked at

Morley and Robbins

- The construction of the orient helped give unity and coherence to the idea of the west

-Helped West see themselves as more superior

-Imaginary

Articulation

Two parts that can be connected to each other and can also be broken

-Ex: race and gender, black and female, all the combos

-To express oneself

Intersectionality

-The study of intersections between different disenfranchised or minority groups

-Belief that societal oppression-- often taking the form of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry-- interrelate, creating a system of oppression that reflects intersection of multiple forms of discrimination

Burden of rep

-SNL skit with Kerry Washington; weren't enough black actresses

Postfeminism

-Taking feminism into account by acknowledging the values and ideologies of feminist in order to render them passe and negate them

-Acknowledge them then ignore them

Postracial culture

Argument that we are beyond racism

Danger with post feminism or racial

- post gives the idea that it's over, its not

Code-Switching

Speakers' ability to alternate between two or more languages in the context of a single convo

ex: orange is the new black: "try to look like a white woman's best friend in white girl movie" when she goes to court for parol

-switch based on the context of the situation, not for lack of knowledge but because one dialect is more appropriate

Appropriation

The use of borrowed elements from another source or culture to create a new work

Ex: Miley cyrus taking on rihanna culture

VMA performance: twerking we associate with "black culture"-- could be troublesome

Flava

-Everything is just a phase

-See Banet- Weiser quote

Banet-Weiser

A celeb identity category that is presented in all its various manifestations as a kind of product one can buy or try on

-Celebs can change identity whenever

Banet Weiser- girl power

-Empowerment of girls has been taken for granted and has been incorporated into commodity culture

-People use it for the wrong reasons

- EX: mileys vma's can be seen as a form of girl power

Avowal vs. Ascription

Avowal - the process by which an individual portrays him/herself.

Ascription - the process by which others attribute identities to an individual.

Agency

Freedom of a person to act on their own power

-they are the agent

Enlightenmentsubject

Individuals have inner core that remains within us throughout time -- Stuart hall thinks this

Sociological Subject

Idea that identity considers how we change based on what's around us

-Very different from enlightenment subject -- stuart hall describes this as well

Post-modern subject

How identity is always shifting and changing, nothing fixed about a person

-- stuart hall describes this in a quote as well

Strategic essentialism

-Accepts the postmodern subject that we are always changing; may be nothing that pulls us together

-Yet political reasons, we have to work together b/c we will never get social change otherwise

Decentering moments

Do we have complete agency ourselves?

What forces impact who we are?

Marxism

Psychoanalysis/Freud

Semiotics

Discipline

Feminism

Marxism

Individuals dont have agency because things already predetermined-- capitalism at the center

Freud

All focused on subconscious; ideas about how we're working through our life to find our true identity

Semiotics

We don't invent the language, we use it to convey meaning, its up to the person to make sense of it

- DOn't have complete control of your life; dont know how it will be interpreted

Discipline

- How people are controlled by always thinking they're watched

-Not a lot of focus on the individual, its always about the discipline and judgement from society

Feminism

Work to bring issues that were formally just personal problems to politics; connecting individual experiences to group problems

Makeover TV

-Television impacts the way we view the role of the individual

-Is the individual really going on to be successful

-Reinventing ones look as necessary for professional development

Conventions of makeover TV

- The individual is called upon to take responsibility

- No sense of the social responsibility of the govt., only private corps and individuals

-Social issues

Oulette and Hays

-Govt. has offloaded much of the responsibility of facilitating welfare of the citizen to private sectors, reality television's efforts to help people improve their 'quality of life' plays another governing role as well

-GOVT AND MAKEOVER SHOWS

Cultural binaries

Trap where everything is A or B, there are 2 types

-Looking to the world in terms of opposites

Third space

People who feel like they are neither of the two, overlapping, or reject them both

Leaky binaries

When the world is divided into specific spaces, frustration ensure

Ex.) Zombies

oLife vs. death

§Zombies are an in-between identity because they are neither alive nor dead

§Zombie movies always using a scene at a shopping mall is making a statement about commercialism and what it means to be alive

Cosmopolitism

An embrace of worldliness, expressing ease with many different countries and cultures.

Hypodermic Needle Theory

- Linear communication theory

-Passive audience

-No individual difference

-All audiences are the same; they will all accept the message the same

War of the Worlds Broadcast

-1938

-Fictional Radio program, designed to entertain people

-Told story of alien invasion, people believed it was true

-People panic's

Media effects

-Influence of media on the average citizen

-Is it without conscious realization

-Media violence causes real aggression?

Experimental Settings

-Statistical correlation on the influence of media-- take measurments

Uses and gratification

-What draws people into to certain kind of media?

-Assumes people have goals, that people are using media to satisfy certain kinds of needs

-Education, escapism, feelings, manage moods

Active Audience

-Audience play important role of interpreting media vs. media telling us what to think

-opposite of hypodermic needle theory

-Also about uses and gratification

Ethnographic Tradition

- Field of anthropology

-In order to learn about culture you have to immerse yourself

-participant observation

-Interviews, diaries

Romance novels

-Janice Radway

-People use romance novels to escape

-Needed a man to nurture and love them, maybe in a way husbands weren't

- wasnt about being oppressed

Encoding/decoding

-Stuart Hall

-Encoding: creating intended meaning

-decoding: interpreting that meaning

Dominant

Preffered meaning of text; clear connection between encoding and decoding

Opposition

-Viewer takes away the opposite; they can also find pleasure in an unintended way

Negotiated

Somewhere in middle of dominant message and oppositional

Culture Jamming

-Kalle Lasn

-Everything is a brand

-Playing with this branded environment and creating new messages (usually anti-corp messages)

Adbusters

-Buy-nothing day (the Day after thanksgiving)

-Anti consumer

-Helps to give power to consumers to resist the consumer world

Brandalism

-Movement in UK to attack companies that are forcing you to look at their ads on billboards where the consumers don't have a choice whether they see ads or not

-The consumers fight back and produce own messages on billboards-- a form of vandalism

-Rejects consumer messages

fandom as pathology

-Is our hate for fans because we're afraid of the mass?

Pierre Bourdieu

-Good and bad taste is culturally constructed

-Related to hierarchies of class

Henry Jenkins

-One becomes a fan by getting active in that program that they're interested in

-Fandom is a vehicle for marginalized subculture groups to pry open space for their cultural concerns w/ dominant rep

-ALL ABOUT FANS, HOW FAN CULTURE IS GOOD

Fans as poachers

-Michel De Certeau

-Scan horizon then pounce on whatever you like

-Metaphor for fans and how they become active using existing text

Slash

-Draw connections you see evidence for that wasn't explicit in the text

ex: romantic pairing playing off erotic tensions

Partic. Culture

1. low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement

2. Support for creating and sharing ones creations

3. informal mentorship

4. Members believe their contributions matter

5. Members feel some degree of social connection

Digital enclosure

-Opportunities for surveilance

-Everything is leaving a digital trail

-commodifies unproductive free time- now monitored, recorded, packaged, and sold

-1. those who control what is in the digital enclosure

-2. those who submit to being monitored

Foucault: The Panopticon

Panopticon meaning ‘all-seeing’

The prisoners can’t hear or see each other

The wall of the cell facing the guard tower is glass so the guard can see the prisoners, but they cannot see the guard tower because of the bright light shining at them

The prisoner always feeling like being watched

Productive surveillance

TV is basically free for us, but the watching is the labor because advertisers and TV are putting ideas into our mind

Media refusal

Act and conscious rejection of a media technology

Does not have to be extreme, it can just be a single platform (i.e. TV, Facebook, etc.)

When we boycott something, it represents taking a standing against the particular media

Can be framed as addiction or elite judgment

Framing Media refusal

1. Addictive: having a problem by using it too much

2. Elite judgement: the hipster movement; you are from a higher taste category; be free from being enslaved by media

Fears about media

When it is first introduced:

1. predictions of utopia or dystopia

2. life will never the same

Media Literacy

Attaining knowledge and understanding of mass media--requires following a critical process that takes us through the steps of description, analysis, interpretation, evaluation, and engagement